While the Stars begin contemplating life without Brad Richards, since that is almost surely where we are headed, it’s a good time to give Stars fans something more pleasant to think about.

How about the past with Ken Hitchcock?

Two years isn’t much time in some pursuits. It’s a lifetime in the National Hockey League.

Marc Crawford has had two tries to guide this team into the playoffs. He came awfully close to pushing all the right buttons down the stretch here but, with a season-ending loss in Minnesota, it wasn’t enough.

The Wild fired its coach Monday.

Stars general manager Joe Nieuwendyk — assuming he has the authority in the club’s current state of disarray — should do the same with Crawford.

We don’t even need to get into whether Crawford’s a good guy with a Stanley Cup ring and a lot of good ideas that haven’t yet been put in place.

This team needs change and it needs new leadership. It needs Ken Hitchcock.

The last coach to bring a championship to a Dallas-area professional team is set to coach Canada in the world championships. He’s readily available for his next NHL challenge.

Since being dismissed by Bob Gainey here in 2002, Hitchcock has taken the Philadelphia Flyers to the Eastern Conference finals. He took the Columbus Blue Jackets on their only (and, yes, brief) playoff trip.

I’m not under any delusions that this roster — especially this roster minus the free agent Richards — is ready to drink from the Stanley Cup again next summer or in 2013. These are different times.

When Hitchcock was here, the Stars had a free-spending owner named Tom Hicks and a perfect blend of young players seeking their first Cup and veterans understanding how to get there. They also had a hard-driving coach who maximized the talent at his disposal.

Now the Stars have a no-spending owner named Hicks who has been trying to sell the team for what seems an eternity. They do have young talent. They are short on the veteran leadership, and I think anyone who watches this team would say they are short in the coaching area, as well.

Look at it this way.

Hitchcock was fired by Gainey because the team was struggling to get into playoff contention after a second-round loss the previous season.

Dave Tippett, the NHL’s Coach of the Year in 2009-10 in Phoenix and in the playoffs again, was fired by Nieuwendyk after missing the ’09 playoffs one year removed from a trip to the Western Conference finals.

Crawford, who led Colorado to the Stanley Cup in 1996, has coached his last five seasons without making the playoffs — one in Vancouver, two in Los Angeles, two in Dallas.

In his last 11 seasons as a head coach, his teams have won one playoff series.

Players have expressed confusion about Crawford’s system almost since he arrived in Dallas. Although there was much less of that this season, the bottom line is that the team continued its trend of missing the playoffs.

Hitchcock has coached 10 82-game seasons with three NHL teams. He missed the playoffs only once, and that was in Columbus where the Blue Jackets have made the postseason just one time: 2008-09 under Hitchcock.

Hitchcock is known as a tough man to play for, a coach who grinds on his players and, over time, wears out his welcome.

You can say that about half the coaches in the National Hockey League.

He’s also known for getting things done, whether at the junior level in Canada’s Western Hockey League or with three teams in the NHL.

From the business end, the Stars have a very tough sell on their hands this summer. This team did not draw well this season. Only Phoenix played to a higher percentage of empty seats among Western Conference teams, and Coyotes fans have known for two years that their team might be headed for Canada.

Hitchcock’s return might not have lines wrapped up around the American Airlines Center for season tickets.

But it would send the message to true hockey fans that the club, despite its ownership turmoil, is serious about putting the best possible product on the ice.

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About Tim Cowlishaw

Tim Cowlishaw has been The Dallas Morning News' lead sports columnist since July 1998. Prior to that he covered the Cowboys for six seasons and the Stars for three as a beat reporter. He also covered the Rangers as a backup beat writer and was the San Jose Mercury News' beat writer on the San Francisco Giants in the late 1980s.

Tim has been appearing regularly on ESPN"s "Around the Horn" since the show made its debut in November 2002. He also worked with ESPN as part of the network's "NASCAR Now" coverage in 2007-08.

Favorite Dallas restaurants: Park, Nick and Sam's, Kenichi.

Worst sports prediction: His first in college ... that Earl Campbell had no shot at the Heisman Trophy.

Best sports memories: Seeing the Dallas Stars hoist the Stanley Cup long after midnight in Buffalo, watching the Dallas Cowboys win the Super Bowl and Texas win the national title in perfect Rose Bowl settings.